Musharraf’s unwitting gift to Pakistan

It may sound odd, even preposterous, to suggest that the one individual who has contributed, though unwittingly, to the quite unprecedented developments in Pakistan is none other than Pervez Musharraf. But consider the facts. Sporting his trade-mark bravado, the former military dictator ended his exile and returned home as a wannabe messiah whose freshly minted party would rid the country of the many ills afflicting it ever since he ceased to be its helmsman. He extolled his achievements during his rule and castigated all political formations for their lack of probity and ineptitude to govern in such hyped-up terms that he only ended up attracting ridicule from all quarters.

Leading the pack was the Pakistani press. On TV channels, in newspapers and in the social media, Musharraf faced a barrage of hostile criticism, much of it lampooning him for his conceited ambitions. Seldom had cartoonists and stand-up comics had such a field day. The leitmotif of the commentators was that the former military ruler was disconnected with the public mood. He simply could not come to terms with the way the country had evolved during his long exile. People may have had sound reasons to deplore the deterioration of governance in every field of endeavour under Asif Ali Zardari’s dispensation. But they were not at all disposed to hand over the reins of power yet again to a former, muscle-flexing army general.

This, however, was only the beginning of Musharraf’s woes. The election commission threw out his nomination papers in one constituency after another with such alacrity that he had no choice but to announce – with his usual flair for histrionics – his party’s boycott of the polls. That did not earn him an ounce of public sympathy. But that did not deter the former dictator to claim that he would live to fight another day to get even with his tormentors.

That balloon too burst in his face when the courts pressed charges against him in a number of cases – including his role in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, the firing of Supreme Court judges and in the murder of the Baloch nationalist leader Akbar Bugti. He made a pitiable escape from the court’s premises to evade arrest but was soon held in custody in two rooms of his sprawling farm-house on the outskirts of Islamabad. Not only were his movements restricted but he was denied access to the few friends who still stood by him. The once all-powerful president of Pakistan had been reduced to the status of a high-profile, yet miserable, jail-bird.

The most startling feature of this dramatic twist in Musharraf’s fate was the hands-off attitude of the army. Many in Pakistan believed that beyond a point the army would not tolerate the humiliation of its former chief. Some even counselled the media and the courts to go slow on the erstwhile president. But both persisted in bringing him to book. And the army, led by the taciturn General Kayani, did not budge. On the contrary, unlike in the past, it bent over backwards to ensure that the elections would be free and fair. By and large they were indeed so as would be obvious from the impressive, overall voter turn-out – in the face of threats of intimidation and violence from extremist, militant groups.

The supreme irony of this denouement is that it is Musharraf who served as a catalyst to bring it about. His return home galvanised the media and the courts to play their respective roles without fear of retribution. He must be given a left-handed compliment for making the peaceful transition from one civilian government to another posssible.

But the path ahead is strewn with pitfalls. It is now more or less certain that Mian Nawaz Sharif will become the country’s next prime minister fourteen years after Musharraf ousted him from that very office in a coup. But the challenges before him are humongous: an economy that has ground to a halt, massive unemployment, power cuts, atrophied institutions, unabated corruption, the mush-room growth of extremist terrorism, testy relations with not only with neighbours like India and Afganistan but also with mentors and friends like the US and China and, not least, an army establishment that won’t take any attempt to clip its wings lying down.

For us in India, caution is therefore in order. Our media has, alas, not exercised it. It has made much of the fact that in their manifestos all parties vowed to improve relations with India. And they have played up Nawaz Sharif’s statements that he indeed intends to do so by picking up the threads left behind after his successful dialogue with Atal Behari Vajpayee in 1999. But a great deal has happened in the intervening years to the detriment of India – notably the terrorist attack in Mumbai and the attack on Parliament. The perpetrators of the first outrage are yet to be brought to justice. Terror groups continue to flourish on Pakistani soil. Pakistani provocations in Kashmir and its efforts to exploit the frustrations of Indian Muslims to de-stabilise India haven’t been given up. There are indeed fears that once the international forces withdraw from Afghanistan, these efforts could well multiply.

The only silver lining is that such attempts have fetched diminishing returns. Pakistan’s desperate bid to seek parity with India, especially in strategic matters, have come a cropper. It needs to harness all its energies to tide over its domestic troubles. All of this demands a fundamental change of course. That, in short, means normal relations with India. The last time a Pakistani leader sought to do precisely that in the final lap of his rule – O, cruel irony! – was Pervez Musharraf – Nawaz Sharif’s bête-noire.